There is a constant need in the canning industry to increase productivity. Can conveyors are utilized in can bottling, can manufacturing and can decorating facilities to transport can bodies in a rapid, orderly and efficient manner between various operating stages. A conveyor which can be reconfigured to transport cans of differing sizes is known in the industry. Many conveyors often comprise adjustable rails and brackets to adapt the runway for various sized cans. However, such conveyors require extensive manipulation to achieve a change from one size can to another size can.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,795,018 to Anderson teaches a contained trackwork for can conveying in which guide rails can be adjusted to accommodate cans of different heights. During adjustment of the trackwork, it is necessary to remove multiple locking pins. This causes the trackwork to be totally unsupported and thus requires the operator to provide physical support for the trackwork while adjusting the conveyor for various can heights. This adjustment arrangement has proven awkward and inconvenient because of the time and difficulty involved when installing and adjusting trackwork for different height cans. For example, a typical can line into which such a conveyor is mounted transports cans at a rate of approximately 1600 cans per minute. In the beverage industry where cost competition depends primarily on speed and efficiency of production, ease of changeovers is an important feature. Thus, this type of arrangement is not ideal.
Other conventional conveyors have the drawback of being constrained to approximately 1000 cans per minute due to the configuration of the trackwork sections which can deflect cans from proper alignment. Even at low speed operation, conventional conveyors still often have misalignment problems requiring substantial time be spent during setup to attempt to prevent such misalignment. Further, many conventional conveyors have numerous adjustment bolts along each section that must be loosened and tightened to modify guide rail spacings for various height cans. Additionally, conventional conveyors usually cannot be adapted for can height and can diameter, rather they can only be adjustable for one or the other. Typically, existing arrangements for gravity feed can conveyors are somewhat limited in their suitability for high speed, low cost processing of light weight cans such as the various sized aluminum containers used by the beverage industry.